Fulop won Tuesday’s race, 53 percent to incumbent Mayor Jerramiah Healy’s 38 percent, a larger margin than many political observers had expected.

In Ward E, the mayor-elect won almost as many votes Downtown as voters there cast for all four mayoral candidates in the last city election.

Meanwhile, Healy lost every ward except Ward F, the heart of the inner city, where Healy edged Fulop by only 50 votes.

Fulop lost many districts in Bergen-Lafayette, including some where Healy’s vote totals doubled Fulop’s. But Fulop found strength in Downtown neighborhoods that are part of Ward F.

Healy’s campaign had been targeting voters in Ward F, where one of his council candidates, Councilwoman at large Viola Richardson, had her best showing.

In total, 38,584 voters cast ballots in the mayoral race Tuesday, compared to 31,736 voters in the 2009 mayoral race and 25,260 in the 2005 contest.

The unofficial results do not include provisional ballots. The official tallies are expected to be finalized by Monday.

Tuesday’s results are a far cry from Healy’s strong showing in 2009, when he won a total of 53 percent against four challengers. Then, Healy won every ward, and in Ward D his share of the vote reached 61 percent. Healy’s Ward D share on Tuesday was 39 percent.

It’s in Ward E where Fulop, a popular Downtown councilman since 2005, saw his biggest success. He won 5,061 votes there most of his margin of victory to Healy’s 1,258, the kind of massive turnout the Fulop camp had been hoping for.

In one Ward E district that includes voters from a portion of Downtown adjacent to the Hoboken border, Healy won only three votes to Fulop’s 92.

The mayoral campaigns of former hoops star Jerry Walker and Abdul Malik ran far behind the front-runners in Tuesday’s contest. Malik only won 398 votes, while Walker received 3,209, or 8 percent, far from the number he would have needed to force a runoff election between Healy and Fulop.